The present invention relates to swimming pools.
In particular, the present invention relates to components which may be assembled together to form at least part of a swimming pool.
It is conventional at the present time to construct swimming pools in such a way that a plastic sheet, such as a vinyl sheet, defines the interior of the pool. It is conventional to support such a sheet at its lower region directly on the ground at a part of the ground which has been hollowed out for this purpose, the hollowed out part of the ground being initially lined with mason sand, for example, so as to have a relatively smooth surface on which the plastic sheet rests at its lower region. The upper vertically extending part of the plastic sheet, however, must be a supported by a suitable backing structure, and for this purpose it is conventional to use metal backing sheets which are suitably anchored and which are provided at their upper regions which a structure to which the top of the vinyl sheet can be connected.
Conventional structures of this latter type have several disadvantages. Thus, while the plastic sheet presents no particular problem since it can be readily folded into a compact unit for shipping purposes and can easily be unfoled and spread out at the site of the pool, the other structure of the pool does not have these conveniences and advantages. For example the metal backing sheets must be fabricated in the form of large flat sections which are very heavy and difficult to transport and handle during setting up of the pool. Furthermore, it is difficult to connect the top edge of the plastic sheet to the metal backing elements in a fluid-tight manner. The result is that water will sometimes flow from the pool to a location between the plastic sheet and the metal backing, creating in this way a faulty pool. The access of water to the rear or outer surface of the plastic sheet must be avoided, and it is not always possible to prevent the water from having access to the outer surface of the plastic sheet with conventional constructions.
Furthermore, inconveniences and problems are encountered with respect to circulation of the pool water for filtering purposes. Constructions of the above type composed of a plastic sheet and a metal backing therefor do not lend themselves to use of an overflow gutter. Therefore it is customary with such constructions to provide an opening in the side of the pool for attachment of a skimmer installation through which water can flow out of the pool to be filtered before being returned to the pool. The attachment of such a skimmer installation itself creates problems because of the complexity of such installations and the inconvenience in connection with the attachment thereof to the metal pool wall.
A further problem encountered with conventional pool constructions of the above type resides in the fact that the variety of pool configurations is limited. Thus, the metal backing sheets are relatively thick sheets of steel which do not lend themselves to curving to the desired extent, so that as a result such backing sheets remain straight, necessitating pools of polygonal configuration composed of straight sections which are angularly adjoined one to the next. While such steel backing sheets are flexible to some extent, it is only with extreme difficulty that it is possible to curve these sheets to the desired extent in order to obtain curved pools. As a result pools of this general type of necessity have relatively sharp corners which are not always desirable.